The present invention relates to a new and improved construction of apparatus for releasing or removing flexible, flat products, especially printed products, out of a product stream or formation conveyed by means of a conveyor device, the printed products being retained by gripper elements of the conveyor device, these gripper elements or grippers being attached in spaced relationship from one another at a traction element or the like.
Generally speaking, the apparatus for the removal of flexible, flat products, especially printed products out of their product stream, wherein the products preferably overlap or overlie one another in an imbricated fashion, contains at least one release device which can be selectively switched-on and switched-off, wherein in the switched-on mode of the release device there are opened the grippers moving past the release device.
In British Pat. No. 921,094 there is disclosed an apparatus of this general type, wherein the products, in the form of printed individual sheets, are stacked following their release by the grippers. Now in order to ensure for a faultless deposition of the released products, even at relatively high conveying speeds, the released products must be braked at their trailing edges, shortly prior to their release by the grippers, by means of a brake device which operates at a negative pressure. The provision of a satisfactorily operating brake device requires a corresponding constructional expenditure in the equipment. Additionally, this prior art solution is afflicted with the drawback that when handling multi-sheet printed products, such as newspapers and periodicals, only part of the sheets are held back by the brake device, whereas the remaining sheets move further without being acted upon by the brake device. Therefore, the danger exists that such type of multi-sheet printed products will be damaged.
Similar drawbacks prevail for the equipment disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 1,465,385 which is complicated in construction, and wherein each of the products, again individual or single sheets, released by the grippers are retained in suspension by an air cushion during the product alignment operation. Because of the thus resulting delay during the deposition of each product it is not possible to randomly accelerate the product stacking operation. This means that the operating speed of such equipment is limited.